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Wednesday, 9 August 2017

A New Post.

I admit I've been a neglectful blogger. I just haven't had a lot to write about. However, I have taken some pictures, some from a while ago, so here goes a long, "picture-ful" post.

I had taken some flower pictures last week to show what's thriving.

Although this constant rain has been a pain in the neck and interfered with sunshine for most of the summer, my urns are doing very well. I try to fertilize every week or week and a half.

I took this picture for Joanne (Cup on the Bus) to show her my obedient plants and see if she thinks that is what she has in her garden. They are definitely August bloomers.

This clematis was given to me 11 years ago. It has bloomed once before. (I am a patient gardener). This year it is putting on its best show ever.

Quite obviously I have not managed to rip out all of my black eyed Susan. This picture is actually trying to show you one of my favourite fillers: Russian sage. Again, this year it is doing remarkably well and the purple plus the height create a lovely background for so many flowers. You can see my giant hydrangea behind it.

Onward to the vegetable garden, which you would think, would be thriving beautifully with all this rain. Not so much. This is a collection of about 4 or 5 cucumber plants. In previous years, the vines would have been roaming across half the garden. I am at least harvesting some cucumbers here and there.

May I now introduce to you the world's saddest patch of tomatoes. This well and truly breaks my heart. They developed blight very early in the season and there was no coming back. I even bought expensive copper-something-or-other powder that I mixed with water and sprayed on the leaves. It didn't matter. By now in other years, my tomatoes have been so huge that I've had to pound wooden stakes in along with the tomato cages so they didn't keep falling over from their own weight. Next year I will have to plant them elsewhere because I think the blight can stay in the soil. No, I do not put the dead leaves in my compost.

These guys are my only hope for toasted tomato sandwiches. Sniff. It reminds me of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree bending over with the weight of one ornament.

Here is what husband has been busy with . Our shed now has a red metal roof like the rest of the structures on our property. He's been working away, strapping over the old shingles, and cutting the metal and putting it up. This morning he was finishing the ridge. Do you see him up there? I asked him if his running shoes had "sticky" enough soles. He makes me nervous. He built the shed himself about 16 years ago.

There he is!

This, to move onto a totally different subject, is the back of my daughter's head. She had just quickly put it back into a braid and I took a picture of it on my phone so she could see how incredible her hair looked. All those variations of colour are totally natural. Lucky duck. I'd have to shell out about a hundred dollars to get highlights like that!

Yup, so that didn't work. Sorry those are sideways. I am also too lazy to go back and try to turn them before uploading them again. Tomorrow is husband's birthday. He'll be a big 53 years old. Today I will bake a cake, a really good decadent chocolate cake, layered, for his birthday. That is what I do. To me, a homemade cake means 'I care' and 'you are important enough that I will make the effort to bake you a cake'. I remember being shocked and little disapproving when I first started going out with my husband and on birthdays in their family, they just got a purchased cake, and not even anything terribly special. Funny, the things that matter to one person, but not another.

Finally, I need to ask, are any of you getting weird comments on your blogs that are just pieced together comments written by other people and seem to be coming from an Asian source? What have you been doing with them? I delete them sometimes and other times click on spam, although truth be told, I have no idea what happens when you mark something as spam. I'm concerned it is some sort of virus infiltrating my computer and doing terrible things. Anyone know anything??

Hope you are all enjoying your second week of August. It is lovely and hot here (for the moment).

44 comments:

Yes- I am getting those weird things all the time, too....from people with Asian identities. I had my son check them out-they usually tie back to a porn site/or scam site. Big surprise there, huh? I just send them to spam (in the 'guts' section of my blog)and after you do it a couple of times they will always go to spam. Make sure you double check your actual blog itself to make sure they deleted from there, too.

Nice to catch up with you with all your photos. Your plants look great--well, the tomato plants look a little sad. lol xo Diana

Me too, I just mark them as spam. We've had a bumper year with our tomatoes and cucumbers (sorry!). Paul planted some blight resistant tomatoes this year so hopefully we can keep them going until late September when my girls arrive. Love the red tin roof.

Jenn, About those Asian comments...yes, I got a few...The first I thought was genuine...then the next I could tell were just crap. I deleted everyone of them. Why can people just be honest about what they do on line...makes me angry. Your hubby is just a baby. What a good worker too. Your flowers are so pretty, so you must be a good gardener. My tomatoes are small but good in salads. I am not a veggie gardener. Blessings, xoxo, Susie

Yes, I thought they were real comments too, when I first got them because I would only get one or two at a time. My husband is fearless when it comes to home projects, indoor or out. He takes on too much, probably.

Envious of that giant hydrangea. Magnificent. ftoo ftoo ftoo. I spit on it 3 times os I dont put the evil eye on it. Love that bright red roof. Love your daughter's hair. What colours!Want some of that chocolate cake! We used to buy birthday cakes but now always make our own. The economic crisis got us into action in many ways. Good thing.Asian comments - dozens of them. They seem to have gone through all my blog commenting on everything. I noticed other people mentioning them so deleted them all.

Oh I like your pink Obedient Plant, I have white & it runs amuck in the garden - trade you! Very pretty pink clematis - yes I like pink anything. How rude that you are getting spam comments - I am shaking my head in disgust at the world. I like your thoughts about birthday cakes, I'm a 50/50 on that one, growing up without an extra money, it was my Mom's creations & she wasn't so good at cakes, so of course store bought meant you had made it, but now I am back to appreciating home creations. Happy Birthday to your husband.

My pink obedient plant is NOT obedient. It goes all over the place! A friend of mine just had her birthday and she always requests a dairy queen ice cream cake. Everyone's different and traditions usually keep going.

That Hydrangea is HUGE, lovely photos. Yes I've also had the weird comments, just copying other comments. One even said it was a porn site! - weird. I just delete and make sure to click the delete forever button.

I used to have comment moderation, but then I thought about how I like to see my comment come up right away on other people's blogs, so I did the same thing to mine. If these silly comments continue, maybe I will go back to that.

I had a couple, but then they stopped. Sorry about your tomatoes, only our small tomatoes produced this year, we hardly ever get any to produce. Your daughter's hair is gorgeous. Happy birthday to your husband, I agree about making a cake instead of buying one.

Hi Jenn...I will be excited if my obedient s are blooming at the cottage! The Hummingbirds love them!Love that Russian sage...must look for some.My tomatoes are pathetic too!No crappy comments on mine...hope it stops for you.Cheers!Linda:o)

That is very sad about the tomatoes, especially because our growing season is so short! Your shed is adorable. I love the work that your husband has done on it. I totally get your feelings about him being up there. My husband goes up on the roof a couple of times a year to check if everything is okay and it's so stressful. It gets even worse when he says to pay attention while he's up there in case I head a 'thud', which'll mean that he fell off! I can't believe how nonchalantly he says that 😧

I laughed a bit about the listening for a thud comment, Martha. My husband has fallen before from slightly shorter heights. He always thinks he can just get something done quickly and doesn't bother to make things perfectly safe. Thankfully he has escaped big injuries.

So good to read a post from you Jenn...so funny about your Charlie Brown tomato plants....and...your daughter's hair is stunning! The red metal roof to your just caught my eye....love this! Happy b'day hubby and thank you for the divine cake recipe!

It all looks good - the gardens, etc. I had something in the soil where I couldn't plant tomatoes anymore. Had to totally move them to a different area. I adjusted the length of time someone could comment on a post and that did away with the spammers. Summer looks good there.

I love the red roof! It is a difficult gardening year - I have lots of tomatoes, but all green. They need heat to ripen and that won't happen with temperatures in the upper 40s (!!!) in the morning! I have never seen such amazing highlights that did not come out of a bottle! Your daughter has beautiful hair~~ I agree, there is nothing like a homemade cake to show how much you care for someone.

It definitely gets cooler at night, now. (Sorry, I'm a Celsius girl, but I'm assuming 40's is cold). Yes, my daughter has always had very blond strands at the front of her hair and she has never coloured it. -Jenn

Omigosh, your landscaping is truly beautiful. How do you do it? I have absolutely no talent for it. Someday? Yeah, if I hire someone to get me started! And come back for periodic check-ups!

My hubby talks of using metal roofing for our buildings needing new roofs, too. But, like you, I really worry about him working on such a slippery surface. He has to get up on our main roof to clean chimneys periodically and that scares me.

Well, at least you have a couple of ripe tomatoes. My plants are luxuriant with greenery and some even have green fruit but they'll never ripen with our weather this season. Sigh.

Your daughter's hair is amazing! We see one little 8 year old girl now and then and her hair looks as though she'd had an expensive salon job done on it. How lucky they are!

I do get whacko comments every now and then but not too often. I just delete them and then take the trouble to go back to the (sometimes) old blog posts to delete them there, too. I don't think it's a virus in our computers, just some irritating person setting their computer to automatically insert the comments randomly. I hope.

Several years back, when we added onto our house, we had metal roofing put on everything. The reason why it was a good idea, is you can strap right overtop of your existing asphalt shingles, so you don't have the mess (and the disposal fee) of stripping old shingles. Since that time, there are so many better choices of metal roofing, nice colours and designs. If we did it again, I probably wouldn't choose red, but now that's what we are known for and it's an easy landmark for people to find us.

Oh, the Charlie Brown tomatoes...just like mine! At least you have a little red in yours! I love the shed...and your flowers, so beautiful. Whenever I get a nasty or odd comment, I just click "spam" and let Blogger deal with it. I don't think you can get a virus from a comment unless they have some kind of clickable link or something like that, that you click on. I'm no techie though.

Sorry that your tomatoes didn't turn out well this year. We also had some blight problems when we had a garden while living in VA and had to let the soil rest before replanting in it the next year. Hope you enjoy your tomato sandwich. The red roof looks really good and maybe his shoes do have velcro on them? Baking a cake from scratch is wonderful and sure tastes better than store bought cause it's made with love. Luckily, we have not been getting spam in our blog comments.

I am sure you are aware that blight is far more common in wet weather. We grow potatoes as a crop and we have to watch them carefully in wet weather. They are sprayed against blight. Our tomatoes (just domestic!) are grown in a greenhouse. My brother in law changes all the soil in the greenhouse every year.Home made cakes are a definite in our house. Anything from a shop is referred to as 'boughten' around here and is severely scorned upon in our household!I have not had any spam comments recently. I suspect they are hoping to get more hits on their websites to up their position on search engine pages.

CLEMATIS HACK IT BACK LIKE YOU DO THE ROSES!!!!!!!!ARE THE ROOTS PLANTED IN THE SHADE?NEED TO BE IN THE SHADE!I AGREEE with your CAKE IDEAS!!!!!!NO IDEA I Just SPAM The ODD COMMENTS.I SHALL SUBSCRIBE!!!!!!

About Me

I started blogging because I started reading people's blogs and really enjoyed them. I have always been a writer. I've kept a journal since I was a teenager (which was quite some time ago!), I wrote stories as a child, and I think things through by writing them down and getting them out of my brain. At the moment I blog about my life without getting too personal. I get a little thrill when someone leaves a comment, so I try to comment on other people's blogs as well. So... go ahead... make my day.

About Me

I am a wife and mother of a twenty-one year-old and a seventeen-year-old living in rural Ontario, Canada. Join me in my journey through gardening, motherhood, living in a century-plus home, surviving husband projects (give me strength), and working full time. I love reading, nature, laughing, small furry animals, and a good cup of coffee on the porch (or perhaps a glass of red wine depending on the day!).